All Blue Eyes & Blonde Hair
by Heart Iconography
Summary: Just a little drabble.


There were a lot of things Daryl Dixon didn't tell people about himself. He didn't like to look weak and keeping his mouth shut kept him out of trouble. He'd been called a lot of things because of it: stupid, quiet, unnerving. Maybe they were all true.

For example, growing up Daryl had always wanted a cat. Wasn't exactly something he went around broadcasting after his father had told him cats were for girls - and he wasn't a girl, was he? So he went along with Merle, committing small crimes, petty theft, and at the end of the day he took his "earnings" and bought cat food. There was a building a couple streets down where a few flea-bitten and feral mongrels lived; he'd leave it there.

No one knew that his favorite colour was yellow. He'd tell everyone blue, sometimes red. It wasn't true though. He'd seen a wheat field once in a movie and had never been able to get over the looks of it. Merle had always teased him about having a thing for blondes, though Daryl had thought it unfair - how could Merle possibly count those women as blondes? But still, there was a grain of truth to it.

See, things like that would've gotten his ass handed to him. His friends would've lobbied around the word _gay _or _pussy - _as if the worst thing you could do was have sex with a man or be a woman. Not, for instance, knock around your girl, hurt animals for fun, or leave your little brother all alone with your psychotic and abusive parents.

So, yeah, okay, maybe Daryl had a few secrets, if you wanted to call them that. Small. Inconsequential. Things that kept everyone from knowing exactly what he was like. It kept him vague. Hard to pin down. Daryl liked it that way; after all, wouldn't anyone when every attempt of connection when you were younger ended with a whoopin'?

He had something they needed - first he was the person who did the dirty jobs, then when Rick began to lose it, he became the man people turned to for protection and leadership. Both were easier when no one really saw you as a person. When you were more of an idea. When they thought you were harder than you actually were. Most everyone let him get away with it - everyone except Beth.

He remembered sitting on the porch with her, pouring his heart out - at least it felt like it to him. She always got him talking. Opening his mouth without thinking. It startled Daryl to find that he had liked it. Liked befriending someone - really letting them in. Not fighting it. Not hurting them to protect himself. But just... surrendering. Giving up on the mystery and evasion. Just telling the truth, no matter how ugly it was.

And she always looked at him with those shimmering blue eyes - like it was the first damn time anyone had wanted to be her friend. He remembered her hair in the moonlight; now _she _was a blonde. And Beth moved so easy; the tilt of her head, the sway of her arms. Somehow. Like despite everything, she was not dragging her body against the stream. Like she had decided to shrug and let the current take her wherever.

She baffled the fuck out of him.

He had been saving these small bits of information for her. For when he found her. He imagined it more than anything else. Would dream about it. Promised himself when he found her that he would hug her. Damned what anyone thought. He'd have a hard time believing it. He'd have to smell her, feel her. Assure himself she was not a ghost sent to torment him, like Merle did sometimes.

Daryl would hold her and tell her about the sheet. How he had held it above the dead man. How he had thought of her, and what the man had said about her, and how he had known she would want him to cover the body. But Daryl had held his anger hot in his heart like a burning flame.

Immediately he had felt guilty. Had wanted to circle back, to do it again. To live in a way that would've honored Beth. Her heart. What she had showed him. But Daryl knew there was no going back. There was only forward. Every day, forward. Until he was standing in front of her again, and she was smiling, all blue eyes and blonde hair.


End file.
